Now Google Will Phase Out IE6 For Gmail & Calendar

Google has confirmed that it will phase out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 for Google Mail and Google Calendar as it attempts to introduce new features as well as improving performance through better JavaScript processing and support for new standards like HTML5.

The search giant, which has two of the biggest online properties on the internet, also mentioned that it will not support other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We suspect that this would include old Opera, Firefox, Netscape, Chrome and Safari browsers.

By the end of this month, Google will remove support for Google Docs and Google sites, something that we have already highlighted. Gmail is the third most used web-based service in the world behind Hotmail and Yahoo.

With 146 million users, it is the second most popular service from Google after search which means that Google believes that people will prefer to give up on Internet Explorer 6 rather than abandon Gmail altogether.

Facebook already started to phase out Internet Explorer 6 by displaying a "you are using an incompatible web browser" message when someone using the nine-year old browser wanted to access the new Facebook design.

Amongst the other big hitters, Digg and Youtube had already withdrawn support for the browser since last year. Yahoo, Windows Live, Twitter and Wikipedia have yet to say whether they will abandon that sinking ship anytime soon.

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Even Microsoft's top brass, such as Brandon LeBlanc said that he supported moving from Internet Explorer 6 to a newer platform, preferably IE8. Even IE's General manager, Amy Bazdukas, was quoted saying that "Friends don't let friends use IE6".